So my players have started to buy eye'ware but its now got to a point of insanity.

My question is this:

If you have
- Cybereyes with Thermographic, Eye Recording unit Image Link, Smartlink.
- Contact Lenses with Enhanced Perception:3, Flare compensation.
- Glasses with Optical Magnification, Lowlight
- Helmet with Ultrasound sight.

- Or any other mixture of modifications above (or not listed that would be applicable) presuming no duplications.

Could you have all of these on at the same time?

None of my characters have tried this but they are starting to mix Contacts with Glasses... so it has raised its head as a question I don't know how to answer.

Your advice is appreciated.

short answer Yes

Hough!
Medicineman

Nice... a little OP but expensive (ish) too...

A bit longer answer. While there is nothing in the rules against turning all this stuff on at once, it could be a bit confusing to look at. Ultrasound, for example just renders what it detects in a way your eyes can interpret, without colour or other details sound couldn't parse. It creates an overlay of the detected area over your regular vision. Little hard to see what your lowlight or thermo is picking up through an overlay. The others don't really interfere with each other as much and in many cases compliment each other. Smartlink tied to camera to record shots and able to see in the dark while not being dazzled by bright lights? All good.
Just be thankful they haven't found the Ultrawideband Radar sensor or the Radar Sensor cyberware. See through walls? Yup. See through invisibility? Yup.

Yes. And also in combination with Mantis' comment about Ultrawideband Radar sensor or the Radar Sensor cyberware.

Don't forget Magesight Eyedrops.

"Legolas, what does your adept eyes see?"
"Everything."

Technically it's all legal. If you have a problem with it, about all you can do is restrict some of the enhancements from being used to target spells with.

One thing to note, with all of that going on in your vision either as overlays or picture-in-picture it would be distracting and should probably impose a -2 to all tests relating to vision. At least in my opinion.

Logically, contact lenses and cybereyes sound problematic because contact lenses somewhat rely on your eyes being moist, which cybereyes aren't I think. Otherwise, by RAW you can layer as much as you want and you should. Being able to perceive threats is a prerequisite to being able to defend against them.

Regarding modifiers for distraction and such, don't forget that all this stuff can be turned on and off. Having all kind of different sights available doesn't mean they are active all the time. Plus, we are talking about people who are used to a world in which their senses are constantly assaulted by advetisments, ranging from that hot chicks underware to that midlife crisis solving car to your left, while casually checking their social network and negotiating the sidewalk. I don't think our standarts of distracting apply.

Nowhere near OP on the SR5 scale. Look into long-term binding and fettering. Cry.

Long term binding was always a thing. Did it change in SR5?

Year and a day as always, with a return if disrupted. Consider it, though. Summon force 6 spirit, pay 6 karma, have it use Assist Sorcery. Boom, +6 dice to your sorcery pool, and if someone happens to disrupt the spirit, it comes back in 22 days. Since it allows 'sets of services', you could have it use a power on you as well, say Endowment so it could hand you one of it's own powers to use at will. Say Fear, or one of the Energy Auras, since they're on most spirits. Make sure the spirit has Aura Masking as a power, and it can hide itself from assensing as well.

For comparison, from Street Magic:So yeah, mechanically identical.

Common sense says that they can be layered...to a point. You can't use thermal imaging through natural eyes, cybereyes, or contacts with goggles on your face because the heat signature of the goggles blocks the receptors in your eyes from picking up the IR emissions in front of the goggles, as an example.

Not really. Assuming you skinlink or PAN them together, then if the contacts have an Image Link (which they all should start with), the other devices can feel directly to them. The contacts sort the information and layer it appropriately.

I don't know. Having the rainbow of infrared layered on top of the matte grey of ultrasound (or UW Radar) along with real-color video plus the highlighting from vision enhancement plus AROs and any other items loaded in your field of view (assuming all of it on at once) would be at least noisy in your vision if not fully distracting.

If all of that isn't distracting, what would qualify for the "distracted" penalty? Because I have no idea if that isn't distracting. If you have all of those as picture-in-picture display, noticing anything in a window other than your "main" view would qualify for distracted IMO.

Nah, it just gives you headaches--but you can totally deal.

You ever seen Star Trek TNG? There was an episode where we got to see through Geordi's VISOR. It was a cacophony of visual details. He said he just focused on what he wanted to see, and ignored the rest. I'm sure people could get used to that sort of thing.

Also, even though you have all of them, that doesn't mean they're all active or present at once. You could use built in software to construct a composite image, or just toggle between modes as you needed them.

In my games I've strictly forbidden layering of vision devices. The simple reason is that it completely ruins the point of tiered stuff. Why use goggles when three layers of contact lenses have total capacity of 9?

You can't layer 5 pairs of contact lenses you say? The same rule that say you can't use lenses behind glasses behind goggles.

The common mistake GMs do with players that do this kind of stupid optimization and munchkin-ing their characters.

Just because there isn't a rule explicitly FORBIDDING something does not automatically mean it is allowed to do it. I can't find a rule that say you can stack vision devices.

There is no reason (From game design view) allow five pairs of contact lenses. The whole point of capacity and availability is moot once you allow stacking. The capacity is there for a reason.

Once again, it all comes down to what you want at your table. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with, say, two layers. Anything more than that -- and even that, depending on the items -- gets tricky and awkward. Cyberyes plus some glasses or goggles? Absolutely, and I don't think anyone contests that. Contacts plus one other thing? Sure. Glasses inside a helmet? Yeah. Contacts under glasses under goggles inside a helmet? It's starting to turn into a headache to keep track of how much shit you've got strapped to your face, and maybe it's time to suck it up and just get something with higher capacity, or to start requiring some (or all) of it be wireless-enabled all the time to keep conflicting data from happening, or something else to suggest the player tone it down a little.

If folks are wanting to stack layer after layer of eyeware, maybe it's time to ask them why. Are they paranoid about just plain old darkness and other vision mods, are they planning some shenanigans with flash grenades, do they think it looks cool, are they just experimenting to see how much shit you'll let 'em get away with? Often the "why" behind something can help you figure out how best to handle it in your campaign.

There is a vast difference between layering glasses over contacts and claiming the rules "allow" multiple layers of contacts. Layering glasses over contacts is done in real life. I know plenty of lab workers, construction guys etc who wear contacts for their eyesight and protective goggles/ glasses for work. Not to mention people wearing contacts and sunglasses.

There are no rules for plenty of things. Their absence doesn't mean they're impossible.

None of them have any functional upgrades in them, they are just glass or plastic. To use them all at the same time does not make sense to see an image in an image in an image. Adding layers of HUDs on top of each other. It is just like listening to your phone, your mp3 player and a portable radio at the same time. While it is physically possible to wire their outputs together it won't give any good benefit for the user.

From a physical standpoint, your Thermographic upgraded contact lenses will just see the temperature on the inside of your glasses and will render you blind, not allow low light stacked with thermographic. Your cybereyes then only see the same filtered light and the vision enhancement no longer has the "raw" data to process (And refine for the limit bonus you wanted). It is not just stupid from a game-design point of view, it also mess with how things should work.

I'd go as far as to let people swap between devices and turn them "off" and require extra change device mode actions to swap vision modes between glasses and lenses but that still suffers from the issues I mentioned above so even that is a stretch in my opinion.

I think Critias is on a very good track asking the players why they want to stack stuff.

Two words:

Awakened Grue (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Will also accept Cyberzombie Grue and Grue Adepts.

We do not talk about Emerged Grue.

But can I get peril-sensitive mirrorshades?

Close enough, load up an ARE Negator program into your sunglasses. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

If you don't think glasses or contacts have any functional upgrades in them, you're sorely mistaken. As for stacking them, that happens sometimes. My mother, before LASIK, had nearsightedness so bad (-23 diopters, for those who understand the term) that she couldn't wear contacts powerful enough. She wore contacts for everyday use, glasses on top of those for driving or reading; and if she needed sun protection, she wore granny shades on top of that.

Then put the thermo on the outer layer, and have it feed back to the contact's image link.